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Doubting Global Warming
Submitted by jgehring on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 12:37pm.
Story summary:
After a Maryland senate hearing on a global warming pollution control bill this week, a business advocacy group sent out a press release with a claim that cast doubt on global warming. The organization, called Maryland Business for Responsive Government, said that "more than 19,000 American scientists" have signed an online petition saying that "there is no convincing scientific evidence" that human release of carbon dioxide will cause "disruption of the Earth's climate." The group directed reporters to www.oism.org. That's a lot of scientists. It certainly gives the impression that most -- or at least many -- experts don't think global warming is a serious problem. But what the press release doesn't say is that this petition was circulated a decade ago, before many recent, highly authoritative reports showing that the scientific consensus is now overwhelmingly that industry is in fact causing global warming, and it's a big problem.
Doubting Global Warming
Baltimore Sun
2-22-08
Nor does the press release reveal that this petition came from a fringe group called the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, which has been criticized by mainstream scientists. “They are totally discounted by anyone serious," said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "And there are no signers who have any standing as experts on the global climate.”
What is the Oregon Group? Source Watch, an online information service provided by the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy, describes the Oregon Group as "a small research institute that studies biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging. It is headed by... an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for 'parents concerned about socialism in the public schools' and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war."
None of the eight faculty members listed on the Oregon Institute's website are climate scientists. Six are chemists, one is an electrical engineer and another is a professor of medicine. After the publication of the “petition” in 1998, the prestigious Council of the National Academies of Sciences issued a statement saying that it was “concerned” that the petition was causing “confusion” because it was sent to scientists with a report printed to look like it came from the National Academies of Sciences.